A database of Caenorhabditis elegans behavioral phenotypes.

Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge, UK.

Abstract

Using low-cost automated tracking microscopes, we have generated a behavioral database for 305 Caenorhabditis elegans strains, including 76 mutants with no previously described phenotype. The growing database currently consists of 9,203 short videos segmented to extract behavior and morphology features, and these videos and feature data are available online for further analysis. The database also includes summary statistics for 702 measures with statistical comparisons to wild-type controls so that phenotypes can be identified and understood by users.

The Worm Tracker 2.0 (WT2) system and phenomic database (http://wormbehavior.mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk/). (a) Schematic of the tracking hardware. (b) Videos are segmented to extract the worm contour and skeleton for phenotypic analysis. Frames from which the worm could not be extracted are annotated with a color-coded border. The border indicates whether the frame was dropped (due to the processor’s inability to keep up with incoming video frames), a stage movement occurred (blurring the worm image), or worm extraction failed (due to an unrecognized shape); features were not computed from such frames. Numbers indicate percentage in each category (mean ± standard deviation). (c) An example of a single-worm behavioral time series measuring maximum amplitude, defined relative to the major axis of the best-fit ellipse (see Methods for details). Several shapes are shown with their corresponding amplitude. (d) An example of a single-worm path (the same worm as in panel c). (e) An example of a feature histogram measuring maximum amplitude (for the strain presented in panels c and d).

Phenotypic summaries using selected features for subsets of strains. Colors in the heat maps are used to indicate the q-value for each feature for the comparison between each of the mutant strains listed on the right and the N2 reference data. Red values indicate features that have a significantly higher value in the mutant while blue indicates significantly lower values. Genes and features were both hierarchically clustered for easier comparison. (a) A subset of mutant strains with previously known locomotion phenotypes. (b) A subset of mutant strains with no previously reported locomotion phenotype.